This disclosure relates generally to presenting content to users of an online system, and more specifically to providing a content item from an online system to a third party system for presentation based on a layout specified by the third party system.
Online systems, such as social networking systems, allow users to connect to and to communicate with other users of the online system. Users may create profiles on an online system that are tied to their identities and include information about the users, such as interests and demographic information. The users may be individuals or entities such as corporations or charities. Online systems allow users to easily communicate and to share content with other online system users by providing content to an online system for presentation to other users. An online system may also generate content for presentation to a user, such as content describing actions taken by other users on the online system.
Additionally, many online systems commonly allow publishing users (e.g., businesses) to sponsor presentation of content on an online system to gain public attention for a user's products or services or to persuade other users to take an action regarding the publishing user's products or services. Content for which the online system receives compensation in exchange for presenting to users is referred to as “sponsored content.” Many online systems receive compensation from a publishing user for presenting online system users with certain types of sponsored content provided by the publishing user. Frequently, online systems charge a publishing user for each presentation of sponsored content to an online system user or for each interaction with sponsored content by an online system user. For example, an online system receives compensation from a publishing user each time a content item provided by the publishing user is displayed to another user on the online system or each time another user is presented with a content item on the online system and interacts with the content item (e.g., selects a link included in the content item), or each time another user performs another action after being presented with the content item.
Many online systems exchange information with third party systems that also provide content to users. For example, a third party system is an application provider that communicates content to client devices for presentation in an application executing on client devices and associated with the third party system, and the online system selects content for presentation to a user that is communicated to the third party system for presentation to users via the application. As many online systems select content for presentation to a user based on information associated with the user by the online system, online systems may provide content with which the user is more likely to interact or in which the user is more likely to have an interest to the third party system for presentation. This may increase the user's interaction with content provided by the third party system.
However, when providing content to a third party system for presentation by a third party system, conventional online systems provide discrete content items to the third party system, which presents one or more of the content items in conjunction with content provided by the third party system. Content items provided by a conventional online system to a third party system for presentation are typically formatted as if they were to be presented by the online system. As many third party systems present content tailored for presentation by application executing on client devices and associated with the third party system, a content item provided by an online system to the third party system often appears out of place when presented in conjunction with content generated and provided by the third party system. Differences in appearance between content provided by a third party system to users and content that the third party system received form the online system may detract from user engagement with the content provided by the third party system and also detract from user interaction with the content obtained by the third party system from the online system.